What it does is it allows us to participate and be a part of the success that the Super Bowl brings to New Orleans. - business owner Lawliss Turner

Super
Bowl 2013 is most visibly a bacchanalia of football, food, music, pop culture
and media, but on Wednesday the National Football League and local organizers
of the vast event staged a celebration of business. Speakers cheered small
businesses, entrepreneurs and New Orleans as a breeding ground for growing
companies during the Super Bowl XLVII Business Leadership Forum.

The forum
served as the finale to the NFL Emerging Business Program, an effort going back
more than a year to educate and involve local businesses owned by women and
minorities about landing work related to the Super Bowl and pursuing
opportunities later. The program included workshops with the NFL's lead Super
Bowl contractors, in which the national firms explained their needs to local
vendors, a trade show where business owners showed off their products, the
compilation of a database listing almost 300 New Orleans area businesses that
Super Bowl contractors or other event planners could draw from and a series of
general business seminars.

At City
Park's Pavilion of the Two Sisters on Wednesday, hundreds of the program's
participants heard from Karen Mills, administrator of the federal Small
Business Association, who praised the Emerging Business Program. "This notion
of expanding the playing field, that's what we're all about," she said. "We
want to make sure that there are opportunities to plug into the Super Bowl, the
supply chain."

They
heard from Rod West, Entergy executive vice president and New Orleans Super
Bowl Host Committee member, on the program's aim to create a lasting benefit.
"The circus is going to leave New Orleans on Sunday at about 11 o'clock at
night," West said, but he said the educational and networking advantages for
the businesses will linger.

Business coach Desiree Young, Idea Village chief operating officer and entrepreneur mentor Kevin Wilkins, marketing and public relations firm owner Cleveland Spears III, staffing company owner Teresa Lawrence and McDonald's franchisee Henry Coaxum speak at the Super Bowl 2013 Business Leadership Forum, the culminating event in the NFL's business outreach program leading up to the Super Bowl in New Orleans.Mark Waller/The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com

They
heard a motivational address from Tom Thompson of the Disney Institute, a
business training organization that emphasizes the approach of the Walt Disney
Company, relating the company's devotion to detail, customer service that
surpasses the rudimentary and clarity of purpose.

Five
entrepreneurs also sat on panel, discussing their motivations, approaches, philosophies
and enthusiasm for businesses blooming in New Orleans.

"I think
that during the Super Bowl that we are focusing on entrepreneurship is the
coolest thing," said Tim Williamson, chief executive of the New Orleans
entrepreneurship catalyst The Idea Village, in a speech at the forum.

Williamson
described a movement, now more than a decade running, which promotes entrepreneurship
as the counterweight to longstanding economic and social ills in New Orleans,
in particular reversing what had been lamented as a loss of talent from the
city, helping transform it instead into an much lauded wellspring of business
enterprise and magnet for the ambitious and idealistic. He shared nuggets of
advice – about dedication, relationship building, setting greater goals and
more - from a selection of New Orleans entrepreneurs.

"Entrepreneurship
is an agent of change," Williamson said. "We're going to create this next
generation of leaders, to solve all this mess."

The Idea
Village's strategy, he said, is to cultivate a network of ties between
startups, government agencies, financial institutions, established professionals,
universities and others.

Connections
were a theme throughout the night. Attendees and program participants said they
appreciated the entrée into the universe of events surrounding the Super Bowl.

Lawliss
Turner's family company, A La Carte Specialty Foods of New Orleans, which
produces crawfish, oyster and shrimp dishes sold in grocery stores,
will be serving crawfish and corn soup for the NFL Tailgate Party on game day.

"What it
does is it allows us to participate and be a part of the success that the Super
Bowl brings to New Orleans," Turner said.

Kathleen
Wilkin's Kenner company, Safeguard Printing and Promo, which does small item
printing, such as business cards and brochures, won a contract to produce
"Thank You" notes for the Host Committee. But she said the chance to meet other
business people was her main goal.

"We got
to know other emerging, small businesses, and we're doing business with them
and we're referring," Wilkin said.

John
Williamson Jr., owner of CAD Printing LLC in New Orleans with a warehouse in
Kenner, which makes signs, banners, T-shirts and other materials, secured the
opportunity to print directional placards for the Super Bowl, flyers and a
booklet for one of the Emerging Business events. He said the program was
primarily a learning experience for him, a lesson in methods for seeking customers.

"You
treat a major corporation in the same way you do a small client," with personal
attention and follow-up, Williamson said.

Tisha
Ford, the director of event business development for the NFL who runs the
Emerging Business Program, said before Wednesday's event that a fundamental
goal was to foster connections among firms that outlast the game, as West
explained. The NFL has been rolling out the initiative in Super Bowl host
cities for 15 years and is changing its name to NFL Business Connect for next
year's Super Bowl carnival in New Jersey and New York.

"The main
purpose is to ensure local, minority and women-owned businesses have an
opportunity to be a part of the procurement process," Ford said. "It's
basically a link. So they have an opportunity to come to the table to be
considered."

She said
the database, maintained by the Host Committee, and the business introductions
made through the outreach series hopefully will prove especially useful in
finding ongoing work for businesses in a major event-hosting destination like
New Orleans.

"If I'm
able to participate in something on the scale of the Super Bowl, then what else
can I do?" Ford said. "Once we're gone, you still should be connecting them to
businesses that do more work."